Welcome to the website of the Digital Media Law Project. The DMLP was a project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from 2007 to 2014. Due to popular demand the Berkman Klein Center is keeping the website online, but please note that the website and its contents are no longer being updated. Please check any information you find here for accuracy and completeness.

The anonymous blogger who runs "The-Paris-site" will remain anonymous, at least for now. Yesterday, a Texas appellate court ordered
the trial court to vacate its previous order compelling the blogger's
ISP to reveal his name and address to Essent Healthcare, Inc. (For
background on the case, see our database entry, Essent v.

Yesterday, Best Buy sent a cease-and-desist letter to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for reporting on
an "Improv Everywhere" prank and their sales of T-shirts mocking the
Best Buy logo. Best Buy claimed the post infringed its trademarks and
copyrights by "promoting" sales of a T-shirt that mocked the Best Buy
logo.

Boston Now reports that Peter Lowney, a political activist from Newton, Massachusetts, was convicted last week of violating the Massachusetts wiretapping statute (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99) and sentenced to six months probation and fined $500. The criminal case arose out of Lowney's concealed videotaping of a Boston University police sergeant during a political protest in 2006.

CyberJournalist.net is reporting that the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) is accepting applications
from bloggers interested in being part of the credentialed blogger pool at
the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado:

James Goodale, the former vice chairman of the New York Times, published an article on Friday in the New York Law Journal (registration required) on CDA 230 and the highly publicized Doe v. Ciolli case.

The Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society announced Tuesday that it is joining as co-counsel to defend RDR Books in the copyright infringement lawsuit filed in federal court in New York by Warner Brothers and J.K. Rowling in October 2007.

Pittsburgh lawyer Todd Hollis is back in court with a second lawsuit against the dating advice site Don'tDateHimGirl.com, whose users accused him of infidelity and infecting women with herpes. Hollis had previously filed a defamation lawsuit in Pennsylvania state court against the owner of the site back in June 2006.

Follow the links from Electronic Frontier Foundation page on the bizarre Manalapan v. Moskovitz lawsuit to see a local government running wild against free speech. The town is suing to get the identity of -- and all kinds of other information about -- a critical anonymous blogger.

Conservative talk show host Michael Savage sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in federal district court in California on Monday for copyright infringement. Savage posted a copy of the complaint on his website. He claims that CAIR violated his copyrights in the October 29, 2007 program of the "Michael Savage Show" by excerpting a four-plus minute portion of the show and posting it on CAIR's website.

Last week, I blogged about a lawsuit filed by Effie Mayhew against Chris Grotke and Lise LePage, co-founders and owners of iBrattleboro.com, in which Mayhew claims that Grotke and LePage bear liability for a comment a user posted on the iBrattleboro site.

I've blogged before about Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger and political activist who has gained renown by, among other things, posting videos on YouTube revealing brutal scenes of torture from inside Egypt's police stations.

Chris Grotke and Lise LePage, co-founders and owners of iBrattleboro.com, a widely acclaimed citizen journalism site based in Brattleboro, Vermont, were sued on November 16 for libel based on a comment submitted by one of the site's users.

City officials in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri unanimously passed a measure on November 21 making online harassment a crime, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. The city's six-member Board of Aldermen passed the ordinance in response to 13-year-old Megan Meier's suicide.

Before the Thanksgiving holiday, Steve Tobak at CNET published a useful post -- "Bloggers beware: You're liable to commit libel." In it, he gives a straightforward and largely accurate account of the elements of a defamation claim and some good general advice:

On October 26, 2007, the New School of Orlando sued Sonjia McSween, the parent of a former
student, in Florida state court, asserting claims of libel, slander,
and tortious interference with business relations.

John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, has an article coming out in the Utah Law Review in which he concludes that the dichotomy between copyright law and social norms "is so profound that on any given day even the most law-abiding American engages in thousands of actions that likely constitute copyright infringement."

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Contributors to this blog include a diverse group of lawyers, law professors, law students, and others with an interest in new media. The views expressed are solely those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DMLP or the institutions with which they are affiliated. To learn more about the DMLP, please click here.

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